schools established in the towns, but which have need of much reform before they can answer all the beneficial ends of such an institution. We should have been happy to have learned from Mr. Catteau the degree of information diffused among the lower orders in the Danish dominions; but upon this subject he is silent. In the University of Keil there is an institution for the instruction of schoolmasters; and in the list of students in the same university we were a good deal amused to find only one student dedicating himself to Belles Lettres.

The people of Holstein and Sleswick are Dutch in their manners, character, and appearance. Their language is in general the Low German; though the better sort of people in the towns begin to speak High German.* In Jutland and the isles, the Danish language is spoken: within half a century this language has been cultivated with some attention: before that period, the Danish writers preferred to make use of the Latin or the German language. It is in the island of Finland that it is spoken with the greatest purity. The Danish character is not agreeable. It is marked by silence, phlegm, and reserve. A Dane is the excess and extravagance of a Dutchman ; more breeched, more ponderous, and more saturnine. He is not often a bad member of society in the great points of morals, and seldom a good one in the lighter requisites of manners. His understanding is alive only to the useful and the profitable: he never lives for what is merely gracious, courteous, and ornamental. His faculties seem to be drenched and slackened by the eternal fogs in which he resides; he is never alert, elastic, nor serene. His state of animal spirits is so low, that what in other countries would be deemed dejection, proceeding from casual misfortune, is the habitual tenour and complexion of his mind. In all the operations of his under

* Mr. Catteau's description of Heligoland is entertaining. In an island containing a population of 2000, there is neither horse, cart, nor plough. We could not have imagined the possibility of such a fact in any part of Europe.

standing he must have time. He is capable of undertaking great journeys; but he travels only a foot pace, and never leaps nor runs. He loves arithmetic better than lyric poetry, and affects Cocker rather than Pindar. He is slow to speak of fountains and amorous maidens: but can take a spell at porisms as well as another; and will make profound and extensive combinations of thought, if you pay him for it, and do not insist that he shall either be brisk or brief. There is something, on the contrary, extremely pleasing in the Norwegian style of character. The Norwegian expresses firmness and elevation in all that he says and does. In comparison with the Danes, he has always been a free man; and you read his history in his looks. He is not apt, to be sure, to forgive his enemies; but he does not deserve any, for he is hospitable in the extreme, and prevents the needy in their wants. It is not possible for a writer of this country to speak ill of the Norwegians; for, of all strangers, the people of Norway love and admire the British the most. In reading Mr. Catteau's account of the congealed and blighted Laplanders, we were struck with the infinite delight they must have in dying; the only circumstance in which they can enjoy any superiority over the rest of mankind; or which tends, in their instance, to verify the theory of the equality of human condition.

If we pass over Tycho Brahé, and the well-known history of the Scaldes, of the Chronicles of Isleif, Sæ. munder, Hiinfronde, Snorro, Sturleson, and other Islandic worthies, the list of Danish literati will best prove that they have no literati at all. Are there twenty persons in Great Britain who have ever heard of Longomontanus, Nicholas Stenonis, Sperling Laurenberg, Huitfeild, Gramn, Holberg, Langebeck, Carstens, Suhm, Kofod, Anger? or of the living Wad, Fabricius, Hanch, Tode, and Zæga? We do not deny merit to these various personages; many of them may be much admired by those who are more conversant in Danish literature than we can pretend to be: but they are certainly not names on which the learned fame of any country can be

built very high. They have no classical celebrity and diffusion they are not an universal language: they have not enlarged their original dominion, and become the authors of Europe, instead of the authors of Denmark. It would be loss of time to speak of the fine arts in Denmark: they hardly exist.

We have been compelled to pass over many parts of Mr. Catteau's book more precipitately than we could have wished; but we hope we have said and exhibited enough of it, to satisfy the public that it is, upon the whole, a very valuable publication. The two great requisites for his undertaking, moderation and industry, we are convinced this gentleman possesses in an eminent degree. He represents every thing without prejudice, and he represents every thing authentically. The same cool and judicious disposition, which clears him from the spirit of party, makes him perhaps cautious in excess. We are convinced that every thing he says is true; but we have been sometimes induced to suspect that we do not see the whole truth. After all, perhaps, he has told as much truth as he could do, compatibly with the opportunity of telling any. A person more disposed to touch upon critical and offensive subjects might not have submitted as diligently to the investigation of truth, with which passion was not concerned. How few writers are, at the same time, laborious, impartial, and intrepid!

We cannot conclude this article without expressing the high sense we entertain of the importance of such researches as those in which Mr. Catteau has been engaged. They must form the basis of all interior regulations, and ought principally to influence the conduct of every country in its relations towards foreign powers. As they contain the best estimate of the wealth and happiness of a people, they bring theory to the strictest test; and measure, better than all reasoning, the wisdom with which laws are made, and the mildness with which they are administered. If such judicious and elaborate surveys of the state of this and other countries in Europe had been made from time to time for

the last two centuries, they would have quickened and matured the progress of knowledge, and the art of governing, by throwing light on the spirit and tendency of laws; they would have checked the spirit of officious interference in legislation; have softened persecution, and expanded narrow conceptions of national policy. The happiness of a nation would have been proclaimed by the fulness of its garners, and the multitudes of its sheep and oxen; and rulers might sometimes have sacrificed their schemes of ambition, or their unfeeling splendour, at the detail of silent fields, empty harbours, and famished peasants.

WITTMAN'S TRAVELS. (E. REVIEW, 1803.)

Travels in Turkey, Asia Minor, and Syria, &c. and into Egypt. By William Wittman, M. D. 1803. London. Phillips.

DR. WITTMAN was sent abroad with the military mission to Turkey, towards the spring of 1799, and remained attached to it during its residence in the neighbourhood of Constantinople, its march through the Desert, and its short operations in Egypt. The military mission, consisting of General Koehler, and some officers and privates of the artillery and engineers, amounting on the whole to seventy, were assembled at Constantinople, June, 1799, which they left in the same month of the following year, joined the Grand Vizier at Jaffa in July, and entered Egypt with the Turks in April, 1801. After the military operations were concluded there, Dr. Wittman returned home by Constantinople, Vienna, &c.

The travels are written in the shape of a journal, which begins and concludes with the events which we just mentioned. It is obvious that the route described by Dr. Wittman is not new: he could make no cursory and superficial observations upon the people whom he saw, or the countries through which he passed, with which the public are not already familiar. If his travels were to possess any merit at all, they were to derive that merit from accurate physical researches, from copious information on the state of medicine, surgery, and disease in Turkey; and above all, perhaps, from gratifying the rational curiosity which all inquiring minds must feel upon the nature of the plague, and the indications of cure. Dr. Wittman, too, was passing over the same ground trodden by Bonaparte in his Syrian expedition, and had an ample opportunity of inquiring its probable object, and the probable success which (but for the heroic defence of Acre) might have attended it; he was on the theatre of Bonaparte's im